Here's a WoL entry from a few weeks ago. I am consistantly only around 9-10khps, sometimes 8k. Is there anything any of you healadins see that I am doing wrong or things that I can improve on? I am almost always the lowest in the charts for healing in my guild. Granted, I am the most undergeared, but I feel like I could be doing a lot more.

I can't actually view your log at the moment, but a couple of questions for you...

1. Are you raids having difficulty progressing due to your perceived low healing?

2. What is your primary healing role (raid/tank/etc.)?

3. Do you find yourself running out of mana a lot, or do you typically end fights with a lot of mana?

If the answer to #1 is no, then I wouldn't be overly concerned about your HPS, since that's not a perfect metric to judge a healer anyway.

Depending on what you're doing primarily for #2, that could easily affect your heailng ability.

And for #3, if you're running out of mana, maybe you're using your inefficient heals too much. If you're being mana flooded, then maybe you should shift some mana regen stats to throughput (spir -> haste or whatever.)

First of all, Lev's completely right - if you're assigned to heal a tank, and the tank stays upright and the boss doesn't, then you've done ok.

Second of all, some comments on HPS as a metric for healer performance: it's not a very good metric for healer performance. You can only heal what damage there is to be healed through. I only looked at your armoury, but if you are indeed the least well-geared of the 3 healers you're taking to those fights, then you're never going to see high HPS numbers from any of you. My group was two-healing most of those fights with 10 ilvls lower gear (I wouldn't recommend that for every group, since we did it out of necessity rather than choice, but the point still stands). You're taking too many (over-geared) healers for the content, so individual output is never going to be that high.

Where HPS can be used as a useful metric is to compare yourself with the same class of healer on the same fight, but even then, assignments are going to be a huge source of variation. Ignoring that for a moment, I don't see what the problem is; your output is on par with the other Holy Paladin (and the Priest) on every kill except for Omonotron, in which you died early from taking a poison bomb to the face. You'll note that you still killed the boss despite being one healer down for three quarters of the fight, which reinforces my previous point.

But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. Looking at the kill logs rather than any wipes, there's several things which stand out. You're not using Holy Shock on cooldown. Ignoring Daybreak procs, your Holy Shock usage is what you'd expect if each of those fights was ~1 minute shorter. So you're losing out on a ton of Holy Power. Hand of Sacrifice usage over all kills: none. Lay on Hands: two. Holy Radiance: variable on different fights, but glaringly absent on a couple. Divine Favor: four. Avenging Wrath (despite being talented into shorter cooldown): three times in six fights. You're worried about your throughput but not using your throughput cooldowns very often, and you're neglecting to use some of the abilities you have at your disposal.

Epimer wrote:Looking at the kill logs rather than any wipes, there's several things which stand out. You're not using Holy Shock on cooldown. Ignoring Daybreak procs, your Holy Shock usage is what you'd expect if each of those fights was ~1 minute shorter. So you're losing out on a ton of Holy Power. Hand of Sacrifice usage over all kills: none. Lay on Hands: two. Holy Radiance: variable on different fights, but glaringly absent on a couple. Divine Favor: four. Avenging Wrath (despite being talented into shorter cooldown): three times in six fights. You're worried about your throughput but not using your throughput cooldowns very often, and you're neglecting to use some of the abilities you have at your disposal.

Agree with everything Epimer said but the quoted paragraph is the biggest part. A Holy Paladin is the "CD healer." Yeah, only one heal spell is on a CD but all of our throughput increasers are on CDs. You need to be using them as often as possible given the constraints of the encounter.

Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Favor, Avenging Wrath, Guardian of Ancient Kings, Hand of Protection, Hand of Salvation and Holy Radiance (unless saving it for a boss mechanic like MagMaw's Lava Spew) should all pretty much be used on CD to increase throughput.

One of the biggest throughput changes I did was to put a CD tracker on Holy Shock right in front of where my eyes look at the screen (in between where my raid frames sit and my toon so I have to look across it like once every 2 seconds. I have been trying to train myself to hit that button every 6 seconds....either as a heal OR as an attack if there is no one to heal. I have also been trying to train myself to hit WoG the SECOND I register 3x Holy Power because I never know when I will get a random Holy Power generated from Blessed Life. I rail a little inside when I get an Eternal Glory proc because, often, I just cast WoG, cast Holy Shock and then my UI registers the EG proc and I am back at 3x Holy Power and know that I just "wasted" my Holy Shock HoPow generation.

And finally, MELEE. Figure out ways to get in melee range and let your auto-swing refill your mana bar. That way, you can be casting Divine Light more often and then getting into a "cast, cast, pause....cast, cast, pause" that allows you to throw out DL actually more often than chain casting HL, HL, HL, DL and refill your mana bar.

My cast spells are HS #1, DL #2, WoG #3, HR #4, LoH #5 and I don't think I cast FoL, LoD or HL almost ever unless the encounter calls for it (which.....I am not thinking of any off the top of my head).

Anyway, change your UI to force you to look at your CDs and train yourself to use them on CD and you will improve your throughput greatly.

Small disclaimer. I cant see the log you posted because im on my phone, but i can guarantee you that light of dawn is a better use of your holy power if you can reliably hit three people with it. The reason Sherck uses WoG is because hes and exclusive 10 raider who doesnt have the facilities to make his raid move into more LoD friendly positioning.

Levantine wrote:Small disclaimer. I cant see the log you posted because im on my phone, but i can guarantee you that light of dawn is a better use of your holy power if you can reliably hit three people with it. The reason Sherck uses WoG is because hes and exclusive 10 raider who doesnt have the facilities to make his raid move into more LoD friendly positioning.

Yes, agreed. I do use LoD but only on specific encounters. When on Artamedes, we use a "long line" strat for raid positioning during ground phase. Melee are on the flank "just" within hitbox range, rDPS are slightly further out and healers are on the outside near the gongs with the tank just within range. That way when rings appear, you only need to move a couple of steps out to avoid, get a cast in and then collapse back into your line.

That line contains 8 of the raid members (not counting tank and gong hitter) so I use LoD there because I am assured of doing a ton more healing with it per HoPow than with WoG.

Same goes for our Magmaw strat with the entire raid stacking up on one side of Magmaw in melee range, the tank on the other side and a OT kiter playing around with larva. On a Lava Spew, I know I will hit 9 raid members if I turn just right and the tank is within range.

But, on most other fights, it is WoG all the time. Tron council? Forget about ensuring you can hit 3 targets plus yourself. Halfus? V&T would be good on T because I heal in melee range but we often only have 2 mDPS and the ranged "always" needs healing due to how much damage they take so I am typically bombing heals on them.

Anyway, it is an excellent point. I use WoG 80% of the time to expend Holy Power because in 10-man, I think surgical healing on a single person who needs it is better than some low level blanket healing that may or may not heal for more. This is MUCH different if you are raiding 25-man. There, you will always use LoD and should not spec into Eternal Glory.

sherck wrote:V&T would be good on T because I heal in melee range but we often only have 2 mDPS and the ranged "always" needs healing due to how much damage they take so I am typically bombing heals on them.

How do you do that fight that ranged take so much more damage than melee? Our group has melee taking the bulk of the raid damage.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

sherck wrote:V&T would be good on T because I heal in melee range but we often only have 2 mDPS and the ranged "always" needs healing due to how much damage they take so I am typically bombing heals on them.

How do you do that fight that ranged take so much more damage than melee? Our group has melee taking the bulk of the raid damage.

Tank the drake in the middle of the room. 2 or 3 m DPS along with a healer (typically me) in melee range on his butt and the rest (2 healers and all ranged DPS) out at the outer edge of the "circle" area below the stairs on either side.

V breath attack (that needs to be shared) will strike the ranged group and then they all shift a couple of steps to the right to get out of the flame. If one gets Engulfing Magic, they move further to the right (or perhaps back on the stairs) to avoid killing the group. Cast and rotate, cast and rotate.

Ranged group typically starts just to the right of where the raid enters the room from (just a the edge of those stairs) and with a normal T phase will end up on the far side where you head to TAC at. Then the strafing runs start and everyone goes side or center to avoid those.

Tank damage is not really that high so a single healer in melee can take of that pretty well. As a matter of fact, I often am bombing Divine Light on ranged knowing that Beacon is going to pretty much keep the tank up along with whatever else the other healers are ocassionally hitting him with.

If one of the melee group gets Engulfing Magic, they clear out a bit between the center and the outer ring inbetween the melee group and ranged group so they can be hit by heals from all three healers.

Yea answers the question. We have the melee pile up in a group. The ranged and healers spread out with nice big gaps between them. Someone gets an arrow on their head they run into the melee to split the damage. A ranged gets engulfing magic they typically don't have to move or stop healing or DPSing. They only have to move for the icky ground patch. Works for us and prevents our resto druid from killing everyone if he gets engulfing magic.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.